


The Strange Case

by doctorcolubra



Series: Weird Therapy [3]
Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Spoilers, Therapy, imagine if the show cared about motivations, or dealing with emotional fallout in any way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 17:10:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21341767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorcolubra/pseuds/doctorcolubra
Summary: After S06E02, Richard has a steel pellet in his ass and a lot of stuff to discuss with his therapist.
Relationships: Jared Dunn/Richard Hendricks
Series: Weird Therapy [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1121382
Comments: 30
Kudos: 69





	The Strange Case

Of course it’s Dr. Crawford again. The most reliable doctor in the Valley, always there for you. Richard knows it even before the door opens, hearing the guy’s familiar chortle in the hallway. Casually belittling an orderly. 

And indeed, the doctor wastes no time, once he hears the chief complaint. “In the _ass_? With a _BB Gun?_” 

“Yeah. That’s right.” Richard doesn’t need the doctor’s help to belittle himself. There’s only one world-renowned authority on the subject of the personal shortcomings of Richard Hendricks. “I was hung over, and I’d gone to see my—my fucking ex, okay, and after I drove him into a _blind rage_ by insulting him and his girlfriend, he grabbed a pink BB gun from his girlfriend’s landlord and fired at me while I ran away. Cool story, I know. Just call me Florida Man. Now can you treat the goddamn wound and bill my insurance and go on with your life?”

The doctor has his arms folded. “You’re a buzzkill. You know that, Florida Man? Fine, disrobe from the waist down and I’ll take a look. Then I’ll fill in the paperwork for my diagnosis of GSW-NSH, gunshot wound with no sense of humour.”

Richard lets him clean the wound and remove the pellet with tweezers. The guy’s not actually that bad when he’s doing his job instead of being an asshole about it. Same as Dinesh and Gilfoyle, really. 

“There you go, loverboy. Keep it clean and you’ll be fine.” Sounding (perhaps) almost sympathetic, Crawford adds, “Try not to date anyone else who isn’t mature enough to own a BB gun.”

Richard doesn’t go home from the hospital. In the Uber, his eyes stinging with exhaustion and shame, he calls Mark’s office. “Yeah, hi. Sorry, hi Dora,” he says when the secretary picks up. “Um, this is Richard Hendricks, I’m one of Mark’s patients. Clients. I know my next appointment’s on the 27th, but can I…”

“Do you need something sooner?” Dora asks, when he trails off. “If you need a few minutes with him today I can put you in after four.”

“Really?” Richard’s in serious danger of crying in front of the Uber driver. As if he deserves same-day service from his therapist after he’s been such a raging asshole. “I don’t want to—I mean, shit, other people probably have real emergencies, this doesn’t count—”

“It sounds like it counts,” Dora says quietly, firmly. “Do you want to come in today at 4:15?”

“Yeah—yes. Please. I do.” He swallows. “Thank you.”

In Mark’s office, Richard picks up the box of Kleenex and holds it in his lap, knowing that he’s not going to get through this session intact. _What do you even expect this guy to do for you? Pretend to give a shit? Pretend to be a real friend and not just a nicer version of Crawford?_

“So what’s going on?” Mark says, sitting down in his creaky leatherette chair.

Richard’s mind always goes blank for a second or two when Mark asks him that, as though everything outside this room is a dream. An overheated fever dream, one where his own behaviour makes no sense to him. “Fuck, man, I don’t—um. Okay, you know how I told you once that I was going to ruin Jared?”

“I remember, yup.”

“Well, I finally did it.” Richard laughs, shifting uncomfortably on the couch. “I broke him. Told you so.”

“How did that happen?”

“God, so much _stuff_ has been happening lately.” Richard has cancelled three appointments in a row, too busy with the company and the Congressional hearing. “We’re finally starting to get—I don’t know if ‘successful’ is the right term, but we’re getting _big._ You know? I have this whole building full of people to deal with. And they’re nice people. That’s the hardest part. They’re on my side, for once. I’m not used to that. They tell me they know how to make a company of this size run efficiently, and I sure would like to have that, so I do whatever they tell me.”

“So you’re getting closer to your goals, in some ways, but you’re feeling kind of overwhelmed.” Mark has been nodding patiently, even though inwardly he must be picturing the surprised Pikachu meme. “And you haven’t had a lot of time for introspection, maybe?”

“Yeah—well, I don’t know.” Richard is trying to arrange the couch cushions under him to relieve the pressure on his BB’d tailbone. “There’s probably time, I’m being a lazy fuck. I’m _thinking_ all the time, my mind’s racing, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t make me any smarter. Or happier, or kinder, or anything.”

“Lots of worrying, not enough insight.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. So how is this affecting you and Jared?”

“We haven’t been…” Richard hesitates. “Ever since I made him COO, things have been…different. Because the COO can’t be doing all the piddly shit he used to do for me. You can’t have give someone a role like that and then let them spend their workday making tea. So we had to hire an assistant for me and put Jared in charge of stuff that actually matters—which I _thought_ was what he wanted.”

“You said he was pretty happy about the promotion, I remember.”

“I thought he was. But he hated Holden, my assistant. Or—” Richard remembers that Mark doesn’t like to hear absolutist words like _hated._ “No, he doesn’t hate him, but he was weird about it. And he didn’t like his new office. Which was further away from mine. They told me he needed to be close to the teams that he works with. Made sense to me, so I signed off. Yet another fuckup, apparently.”

“Well, don’t rush to judgement. Just because something has an outcome that you don’t like doesn’t necessarily mean you made a mistake,” says Mark. “You say you haven’t had a lot of time to consider things lately, not in any useful way, so let’s try to sort this out. Did you ask Jared what kind of office space he wanted?”

Richard snorts. “I didn’t even ask myself that. My office looks like The Max from _Saved by the Bell._”

“And you’re not a fan of executive vaporwave as an aesthetic. Understandable. But what do you think is behind Jared’s dissatisfaction?”

“He wanted to be closer to me,” Richard says, unable to dodge the question any further. “Like we used to be. And I want that too—I want a lot of things—but the company has to grow. Right? Wasn’t that the point of all this? Maybe we weren’t ready, but…I mean, at least it’s a development. Jared making tea for me was never going to turn into anything else. Anything more. Fuck, I’m getting ahead of myself.”

“That’s okay. What happened today, Richard?” Mark isn’t taking notes, just listening. “I can see that you’re having a rough one.”

“I’m getting there. I think.” Richard isn’t ready to describe the Florida Man incident yet. A little more background, a little more context, and he might feel like things make sense. “Um, so Jared quit. We had a disagreement about what we should do with this guy on our network who was—it doesn’t matter. I thought we’d settled it. He seemed happy, and we were about to get beers, even, but I got interrupted. Again. And then Jared resigned. Right when—I mean, fuck.” Richard tilts his head back, blinking to clear his eyes. He’s going to fight this off as long as he can. “I really needed him.”

“Obviously, I don’t want to speak for Jared here. But from what you’re saying, it sounds like he’s been unhappy with the situation for awhile.”

“But it’s what we wanted.”

“Sometimes we want things that aren’t good for us.”

“That’s kind of what he said.” Richard takes a tissue from the box, swiping impatiently at his eyes. “That the company has different needs now, and so does he. So—so I get what I wanted, and then I find out that I can only have it if I sacrifice my partner. Like some kind of fucked-up Lovecraftian ritual, except at least _those_ guys know that going in.”

“And if you’d known beforehand that success might cost you your relationship with Jared, do you think you would have refused it?”

Richard doesn’t know the answer to that. He’s made so many terrible decisions already. Maybe he would have signed Jared over to Cthulhu in exchange for victory, but he doesn’t want to be that kind of guy. His throat is thick. “I should have.”

“Okay,” Mark says, quietly, and asks the same question again. “But what happened between you two today?”

“I needed him. I did. Something happened—I can’t go into it, there’s no time, but it’s a big deal. Monica wouldn’t even give me any advice, she kept saying it was like—like an abortion. That it had to be my decision, I mean.” He can’t hold the tears back any longer, even though he knows how pathetic he looks. A mean, petty, selfish asshole who got what he deserved. Crying about it at his therapist’s office. “All these people who are supposed to advise me, they’re supposed to _help_ me, and they’ve got nothing. And my COO flew the fucking coop because his real passion was micromanaging hopeless fuckups, I guess, not running a company. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. So you were in a situation where you wanted Jared’s input, but he wasn’t there.”

Richard nods. “I found him at the hacker hostel. Where we started. I swallowed my pride—like last time. Begged him to help, offered to give him whatever he wanted. Office next to mine, sure, who cares what Tracy thinks is efficient? And I was—I’m making myself sound way too good.”

“How so?”

“I was…” Richard takes a minute to think about it. Playing with the cap of his water bottle. “Like, I would have said anything to get him back. That’s manipulative. Right?”

Mark spread his hands. “Not to sound like a chatbot, Richard, but do _you_ think you were manipulating him? Were you only pretending that you wanted to be close to him again? Was it all a front to get his business advice?”

“No, I _wanted_ Jared back.”

“And did you have any real intention of meeting his needs? Improving your relationship long-term?”

Now Richard squirms, pain darting up from his tailbone. “I mean…I never told him what I told you. About—about how I like him. So I felt like it was for the best, you know, if Holden took over all the more infantilising tasks. All the medieval valet stuff. Let Jared come into his own.”

“You felt that some space would help.”

“Yeah. If I’m not going to—whatever, be his boyfriend—then there’s literally no reason why he should be pressing my underwear. Jared’s a serious professional. I shouldn’t waste his time.”

“It sounds like you made that clear to him, and he took you at your word.” 

“I know. I know.” The guilt is gnawing at him like an ulcer, but so is the desire to get Jared back by any means necessary. “So I begged and I pleaded, and I guess I manipulated, but he wouldn’t come back. And I got—I was mad. I think I’d been mad at him ever since he handed me that resignation letter. That’s the manipulative part, I pretended that I didn’t still want to scream at him for turning his back on me. And then I _was_ screaming at him, and then he was screaming back.”

“What did he say?”

“He kept telling me to leave, to get out, and I wouldn’t listen. I called him a buddy-fucker, and it pissed him off—he didn’t want to admit that he’d done anything wrong. It’s always me, Richard the fuck-up, everything’s always my fault. I’m responsible for a lot of shit, you know, I’m not denying that. But I’m tired of being the only one who ever gets hung out to fucking dry.” Richard knows he sounds irrational; he can’t explain what he thinks Jared did wrong, exactly, only that he felt betrayed. “I kept saying _buddy-fucker_ again and again, because at least that made him mad. If I have to feel this way then so does he. And then I saw Gwart.”

“You saw…?”

“Gwart, she’s—that’s the other thing.” Richard can still feel a flare of anger, like blowing on hot coals. “Jared didn’t just leave, _there’s someone else_. This coder at the hostel, Gwart. I don’t even know if that’s her first or her last name. She’s got some _incredible coding idea_.” Richard makes a derisive gesture in the air, suggesting a grand marquee, Gwart’s name up in lights. “What-the-fuck-ever. The most obvious rebound you can possibly imagine. She even…I mean, she doesn’t look like me—she kind of looks like the opposite of me. She’s a girl, she’s brown, she’s chubby. But she’s a version of me, you know?”

“You feel like you have something in common with her, besides being the object of Jared’s attention.”

“Jesus Christ, Mark, you can stop being so polite with me, okay? I’m an asshole.” Richard feels the same hostility for Gwart that he feels for himself, even though he's never spoken to her. “Look, I’ll say it—Gwart’s a pathetic nerdy space cadet who can’t function in real life on her own. The second I saw her I knew. She’s a brain in a jar. Like me. Fucking exactly like me. That’s what Jared likes. That’s what he wants. Okay? I know it, Gwart knows it, the American people know it. He wants to be needed, and he gets insecure if he’s not.”

“Do you _know_ that? Really?” says Mark. “You only met Gwart today.”

“It’s a suspicion. A hypothesis. An educated guess.”

“But not knowledge.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Richard can’t argue, so he moves on. “So I’m a piece of shit, but Jared’s not perfect either. And he didn’t like hearing me talk shit about Gwart. I didn’t even say anything that bad about her—I said she was googly-eyed, which people say to _my_ face, and I’m supposed to take it. But Jared flipped his shit. Jian-Yang came in with a gun.”

Mark’s eyebrows come up. “A _gun?”_

“A pellet gun, I mean. Is airsoft the same—whatever. I don’t know from guns, and I wouldn’t put it past Jian-Yang to have a real one. I only realised it was fake when Jared pulled the trigger. He hit me right in the ass. I was running away.”

“Wow.” For once, Mark seems too surprised to have a response at the ready. “So you’ve had a hell of a morning, huh? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Clearly I’m doing amazing, Mark.”

“Sorry.” Mark picks up his legal pad and pen again. “Listen, Richard, my role here isn’t to adjudicate between you and Jared, to say this was your fault but that was his fault. I’m here for you and I’m on your side. Okay? What I’m trying to do is show you ways to manage your emotions more skilfully. You got angry at your friend—that happens to everybody. Even Jared, as you found out.”

Richard nods mechanically. “Anger's fine, but I shouldn’t have acted on it. I get it.”

“Not necessarily. It’s okay to act on a feeling of anger. To draw a boundary, to protect yourself or someone else. To express it. But usually, when people are mad, the problem isn’t that they’re expressing themselves, it’s that they’re acting impulsively.”

“Like Poopfare.”

“Exactly like Poopfare. You had feelings that you were unwilling to think about, unwilling to own, and then when they became overwhelming, you lashed out. Kind of a Jekyll-and-Hyde pattern.”

That’s accurate enough to make Richard wince. _You’re one more abuser in Jared’s life, blowing hot and cold, attacking him because you can’t control yourself._ “Yeah. Fuck. That’s true.”

“It might apply to Jared too, but we’re talking about you. You ever read that book in high school? Robert Louis Stevenson?”

Richard vaguely remembers reading _Frankenstein_ in two days before the final, but not much else from high school English. “No.”

“It’s interesting. Jekyll’s reasons for creating the formula are sort of obscure—Stevenson doesn’t say exactly what Jekyll wants to _do_ with this alternate personality. Things that would be beneath his dignity as a decent Victorian gentleman. The reader’s left to guess what those things might be. So at first maybe he wants to see a sex worker, or he wants to get drunk in public. But because he’s not willing to admit to these vices, he gives more and more power to Hyde. Both psychological and legal power. And that’s when Hyde starts to do things that aren't just scandalous, but horrific.”

“Doesn’t end well for Jekyll, does it?”

“Nope. He runs out of the antidote, and when he tries to make more, he learns that he never really understood his formula in the first place. Never understood himself. What do you think he could’ve done, to save himself?”

Richard sighs, leaning over to drop his shredded tissues in the wastebasket. “Is this homework now?”

“This isn’t a test of how well you know Stevenson, it’s a test of how well you know Mark Brevda. What’s the kind of thing I _would_ say about a story like this? Do your best impression of me. How can Jekyll save himself?”

Richard does know Mark well enough to be able to hazard a guess. “Uh…he should have…um, he should have admitted to himself that he wanted to have sex with prostitutes? Sex workers?”

“Good first step. What next?”

“He should have—I don’t know. Are you saying I should see a sex worker?”

“Keep trying.”

“He should have…found healthy ways to, to fulfill—to _address_ his desires?” Richard is getting the idea. “So that—maybe—he could be Hyde and Jekyll at the same time. Without losing control, without making stupid decisions and hurting people. Integrated.”

Mark points at him with his pen. “There we go.” 

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“If you had a Mr. Hyde formula, and you could go out in the Valley and be your worst self without anyone attaching blame to Richard Hendricks…when do you think you’d use it? Like, what would be a trigger?”

Richard laughs shortly. “Everything. Every time someone calls me the dumbest guy in tech. Every time I sign a contract and find out I got screwed. Every time someone tells me they’re behind me and then they’re not there when I need them.”

“So, insults, exploitation, betrayal. Stressful experiences.”

“Yeah.”

“And stress is…”

“Something I can cope with, okay, fine.” Richard knows the answers to questions like this, even though he doesn’t want to commit. “Self-care. Get a massage, microdose something. I don’t think that’s enough.”

Mark lets him have the point. “You’re right. People out here have a reductive, consumerist approach to managing stress. ‘Buy this product, hire this expert, they’ll make you relax.’ What you _need_ is time. Time to develop better coping skills, so that you don’t get overwhelmed and flip into Hyde mode when you’re under pressure. Time, and a willingness to accept that these feelings exist. Where could we start, do you think?”

“Um…I could come to therapy more often.”

“Sounds good. Anything else?”

Richard runs his hand back through his hair. “Fuck, I don’t know. Meditation? I hate meditating.”

“I’m not going to hassle you into meditating if you don’t want to do it,” says Mark. “How about journaling, though? You’re making a face, you don’t like that idea?”

“It seems so self-satisfied. Writing in my Moleskine in Starbucks. I’m a lousy writer.”

Mark shrugs. “Who says you have to be James Joyce? No one’s gonna read it. Tear the pages up when you’re finished, if you want. But you’d be getting the words out. Like you do in sessions with me. Put all your feelings on paper and then you can assess them. Figure out what’s helpful, what’s difficult, what’s really going on. Maybe you’d like to write a letter to Jared. Even if you don’t send it.”

“Maybe. Since he’ll never speak to me again.”

“He might not. And it’s legitimate to be sad about that, and angry that he hurt you. Even if you hurt him too. You feel whatever you feel, and trying to turn those feelings off at the tap is always going to be a losing battle. But there are other people out there, Richard. People you’ll have feelings for, people you’ll work closely with. Learning how to recognise your own emotions, learning how to express them safely to other people—that’s a skill you’re always going to need.”

“But I want Jared.” It’s taken him so long to admit that to himself, and now he’s lost his chance. “I can't—can I apologise? Or is that more manipulation?"

“Take a few drafts and try to write a real apology to him," says Mark. "Not because apologising is some kind of magic spell to make him come back. But because you still care about him.”

Richard is coming around to the idea. “Maybe that would help to—it wouldn’t make it right. But he might hate me less, even if he never wants to work with me again. I don’t want him to think I never cared. To go around with that in his head for the rest of his life, thinking I only saw him as, like, my butler. But I shouldn’t tell him about…about my feelings. Right? That’s jerking him around. It’s too late now.”

“Up to you. Write it down and see how it looks. Then decide. If you take responsibility for your own feelings, and you think he should know, you could tell him. Without being attached to the outcome. Without thinking you can make him do anything.”

“Okay.” Richard’s first instinct is to say that he doesn’t know how, that he can’t wrangle his emotions just by wanting to, but he knows that’s an excuse. Sitting here and talking to Mark _does_ help. Writing things down might scratch the same itch. “I can do that, yeah.”

“Use paper,” Mark adds. “I don’t want you coming in here next week to tell me you hit send at the wrong time.”

Richard smiles wanly. “You got my number.”

Richard doesn’t use paper. His penmanship is awful, and writing longhand is uncomfortable—he grips the pen too hard, sweats onto the paper, blots the ink. Typing is the only thing that feels natural to him. But he turns off the wi-fi and starts typing in a Notepad window. Headphones on, the Smiths playing with Spotify in offline mode: Morrissey may be a terrible role model, but he makes Richard feel like his own pettiness and jealousy aren’t quite so freakish and unusual. _Is it really so strange?_

When one document starts to go off the rails, he saves it and starts a new one. None of it will ever see the light of day.

buddyfucker.txt  
fuckgwartandfuckyou.txt  
letterfromanasshole.txt  
whyinevertoldyou.txt  
imissyou.txt  
pleasecomeback.txt  
staywithgwart.txt


End file.
